My chemical toenail

As some of you know, I messed up my toenail a couple months back. I almost always wear sandals, especially in the summer, but one day when I was headed to a gym to play basketball, I decided to lace up the ol’ shoes. Naturally, I guess since I’m not used to wearing them, I jammed my big toe on the front of my shoe.

My left, big toe was stiff for a week but felt fine after that. My toenail, on the other hand [ahem], turned black right as my toe loosened up. And black it’s been since then.

Until today.

Today, I decided to try to rip it off. I grabbed one of those cuticle tools and started prying the toenail up. The toenail had lifted from the cuticle but wasn’t at all loose.

After some digging, including the torture move where you jam that tool straight up the front, I managed to detach the right side. From there, it was merely a matter of twisting it around and around, the way you might twist a tooth off.

The result wasn’t what I had expected. My new toenail had started to grow back. It’s about a third of the way back. But it’s back in black. And it’s mangled. And the skin where there’s no toenail is mangled too.

I thought perhaps a simple washing or scrubbing would shape it up, but I was wrong. For now, I have this ugly mess of a small, big toenail on my left foot. We’ll see how it grows back over the next few months… or not.